For the latest news and updates,
follow our social channels
2021 Year in Review
Five years! After building for four, we found our place and hit our stride in 2021. From our launch as a stand-alone agency that shared books with new mothers and their children, we now recognize our place as an important conduit to and integral part of our region’s coordinated effort to make a real lasting […]
Volunteer Spotlight: Eileen Dreyer
We are so grateful to have NYT Best Selling Author Eileen Dreyer (aka Kathleen Korbel when writing romance novels) on our Advisory Board. Her experience as a trauma nurse, love of literature and life lessons learned as a mother have all contributed to the impact she has on our success. Plus, as you might guess […]
2020 Year in Review
2020 was a year that proved we are Stronger Together. Year four of our all-volunteer effort to make a difference in building literacy as a foundation for children in low-income communities brought its own share of unique challenges, chief among them the pandemic and the ensuing cancellation of Oktoberfest (our major fundraising event). But we […]
Volunteer Spotlight – Patrice Shumate
Patrice was a member of our Management Committee before relocating to Texas, where she now resides with her husband and two young sons. She continues as BFN’s volunteer Director of Development, leading our efforts to identify and apply for funding from charitable donor organizations with missions aligned with our own. Her Masters in Social Work […]
Volunteer Spotlight: Paula Brazill Wallrich
Nurses in NICUs in Minnesota published findings about the calming effects that colorful crocheted octupi (like the one pictured here) have upon newborns in their care. Paula – a long ago St. Louis resident who now lives in suburban Chicago and puts her considerable crocheting skills to work for several charities there — read those […]
Donor Spotlight: Kyle & Bridget McClellan
Former World Series Champion pitcher Kyle McClellan and his wife Bridget, who serves as Executive Director of their BraceforImpact46 Foundation, donated 150 “lightly used” children’s books for our expanding Big Brothers Big Sisters program, sparking several other young mothers “like new” book drives that have collected well over 1,000 more books so far. Their BraceforImpact46 […]
2019 in Review
2019 was truly magical. In only our third year as an active all volunteer organization, we doubled the number of families we had reached the prior year, putting books in the hands of 3,173 mothers of newborns through our twelve delivery partners. In only three short years we have created more than 6,500 newborn libraries […]